Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 118

Screening Room: ‘Moonlight’

In the sumptuous melodrama Moonlight,Barry Jenkins’s Oscar-favored film explores the three stages of a young man’s life in a rough Miami neighborhood.

Moonlight is opening this week. My review is atFilm Journal International:

It’s safe to say that after his last feature, 2008’s romantic talkfest Medicine for Melancholy, few people would have expected Barry Jenkins to be starting off his newest film with a do-rag-wearing drug dealer rolling through a rough-and-tumble Miami. The characters of...

Screening Room: ‘Aquarius’

In the newest film from Brazilian directorKleber Mendonça Filho (Neighboring Sounds), Sonia Braga plays a retired writer trying to fight off the developers whowant to demolish her cozy beachside buildingand all the memories it contains.

Aquarius, which was part of the just-concluded New York Film Festival, is playing now in limited release. My review is atPopMatters:

Theheroine of Aquarius sees the whole world as a stage for her to command. It’s a testament to Sonia Braga’s control that she...

Reader’s Corner: ‘Strangers in Their Own Land’ – Fury and Crisis in Trump’s America

(photo: Gage Skidmore)

It’s hard to look at today’s chaotic political and cultural landscape and not wonder—among many,many other things—in deference to Joan Walsh’s book from a couple years back: “What’s the matter with white people“?

A part of the answer can be found in Arlie Russell Hochschild’s fantastic new book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. It came out last month and is necessary reading to understand what is and has been going on in America for...

Writer’s Desk: Dylan Says

Since Bob Dylan has been honored with a Nobel Prize for Literature, we may as well welcome the man into the community of those practiced in the art ofbelles lettres. Good to have you, Bob!

Here’s someadvice from Mr. Zimmerman contained in Paul Zollo’sSongwriters on Songwriting, which could apply to most any writers:

It’s nice to be able to put yourself in an environment where you can completely accept all the unconsciousstuff that comes to you from your inner workings of your mind. And block...

Weekend Reading: October 14, 2016

There might be a large “Planet 9” at the outer edge of the solar system. This is how you get murdered in today’s Philippines. National Museum of the American Indian and other awesome buildings never built. Modern creepy clown hysteria got started in Brookline, Mass. back in 1981. Gauntlet thrown by conservative woman: “SomeTrojan horse nationalist sexual predator invades the@GOP, eating it alive, and you cowards sit this one out.” A portrait of a descent into madness. Thewomen who...

Screening Room: ‘The Accountant’

InThe Accountant, Ben Affleck puts on glasses and his serious face to play … an accountant … who’s notreally just an accountant. See? It’s like one of those twist things.

Directed by Gavin O’Connor (Warrior),The Accountant opens this week wide. My review is atFilm Journal International:

In what could serve as the year’s most preposterous mainstream release, Affleck plays Christian Wolff, an accountant who works out of a strip mall in downstate Illinois, finding deductions for local farmers....

Writer’s Desk: No Poor or Unimportant Place

Time to hear from Rainer Maria Rilke on the what and the how of writing:

Depict your sorrows and desires, your passing thoughts and beliefs in some kind of beauty—depict all that with heartfelt, quiet, humble sincerity; and use to express yourself the things that surround you, the images of your dreams and the objects of your memory. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is...

Quote of the Day: Trump and “the Women”

As reported in the July 12, 1999New York Post, Donald Trump onHardball:

People want me to [run for president] all the time … I don’t like it … Can you imagine how controversial I’d be? You think about him [Clinton] and the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine?

(h/t: Political Wire)

Weekend Reading: October 7, 2016

The United Nations has an Office for Outer Space Affairs; they’ll be sending their first mission into orbit in 2021. Apparently Congress didn’t understand sovereign immunity before voting to potentially eliminate it. So, “escape rooms” are a thing, eh? One out of five guns recovered at Chicago crime sceneswere bought in Indiana; thanks, Pence! If Trump wins, Congressional gridlock will end … in a very bad way. The stereotypes that just won’t die. If felons could vote, Gore would have trounc...

Writer’s Desk: Don’t Be a Jerk

The topic of cultural appropriation is never an easy one, particularly when it comes to writing. When Lionel Shriver, author ofWe Need to Talk About Kevin, launched her jeremiad at the Brisbane Writers Festival, she steadfastly stood on the side of writers being freeto write about whatever and whomever they damn well pleased, regardless of their race or background.

It was the speech that launched a thousand op-eds. Many leaped to Shriver’s defense, seeing a long-overdue pushback against the f...